The strength the AK Party needs

The power the AK Parti needs lies nowhere other than in the justice from which it takes its name. Justice is the head of everything, the foundation of dominion, the measure, balance, faculty, conscience and feeling of whether a thing is in its proper place.

The fundamental motivation that has carried the AK Parti to today, that has given the AK Parti the strength to carry Türkiye to today, was nothing other than the demand for justice and its practice. It is the most powerful energy that gave it the strength to resist, and the courage to defy, its external and internal ill-wishers.

The AK Parti has accomplished no small amount for the establishment of justice. While building, with all the reforms it carried out, the social, economic and political infrastructure of strong citizenship in Türkiye, what it sought and secured was in fact nothing other than justice. Reforms were carried out on the road to becoming a country where nobody faces pressure or discrimination because of their ethnic origin, language or belief. Here too, what was sought was of course justice, and a long way has been traveled on this road.

The number of people living below the hunger line, at less than 4 dollars a day, was 32 percent of the population. This was a clear sign of social injustice. With the social state policies put forward to eliminate this injustice, this rate was brought down to nearly zero. And when per capita national income was raised from 2,700 dollars to over 10 thousand dollars, what was aimed at and secured was justice.

Everyone, from the poorest to the richest, benefits from the raised level of welfare of the country. If today the poorest people of this country can be treated in the same hospitals, to the same standards, as its richest people, this is possible thanks to a goal of justice that has been realized and is being lived. Regardless of the high school they graduated from, the social circle they come from, or whether they have a headscarf on their head, and without obstacles being placed before them, more people from every economic level today can study at universities. State universities are entirely free, and moreover support those in need with scholarships and loans so as to give them the chance to study, and basic education is provided with the full support of the social state in a way that does not create inequality of opportunity, etc.

If we set out to lay out the balance sheet of what the AK Parti has accomplished in the name of justice, the list would go on and on. There is not even a party or movement that can compete with the AK Parti on this, either in its past record or in its programs and capabilities today. Even so, justice is a path continually followed. It is a road of unending revolution. A bar is set at every point you reach, and you must rise higher still. For the test of justice, and the performance of its realization, are readjusted according to the level reached, and you must not fall behind it.

For example, we can no longer find consolation in how good Türkiye is now by comparing it with the level of the nineties. In earlier periods we used to say that the AK Parti's rival was again the AK Parti, for two reasons. One, there was no opposition facing it that offered even the slightest hope of doing better. Two, the AK Parti saw the greatest obstacle to realizing its own promises not in the opposition but in itself.

In fact we are at no different a point today. There is still neither a party nor a movement that is an alternative to the AK Parti, that offers a better hope in terms of justice for the world of the future. And again, what keeps the AK Parti from realizing its own promises, what obstructs it, is nothing other than its own mistakes or performance drops, rather than the opposition itself.

What seems to have opened a way out for the opposition today, especially in Istanbul and Ankara, is not their discourses, programs or projects for a fairer, better Türkiye, but nothing other than the exploitation of the discontent accumulated against the AK Parti over 17 years of governing practice. The cause of this discontent is of course not those who are discontented. This is precisely where the faculty of justice comes into play. What are the things that are not going right, that produce discontent, that we dismiss as details and turn away from, that we refrain from looking at and seeing, which accumulate this discontent?

The "Justice" and Development Party needs to attend to precisely these "overlooked details," these "small things," and to evaluate them within itself. Because at the scale of government, an "overlooked detail" means a great deal for individual lives, each of which is a world. Having the feeling of the sheep seized by a wolf on the bank of the Euphrates should become the real character, not a fanciful discourse, of those who demand justice. The most insidious enemy of justice is negligence, indifference.

Justice, even if I do not like its results. Justice, even if it is against me and my relatives. Justice, even if it points to a verdict in favor of a person of a group, a community, a party, a nation with whom I am angry.

Everything that is not in its place is oppression. Every cent of earnings that is not the product of labor, that is undeserved, every undeserved post, every duty in the hands of someone unfit, entrusts that have lost their place, are signs of a loss of justice. Because justice is everything being in its proper place.

There is a very simple measure of whether something is in its place. If something suits its place, it sits beautifully there, it is in its place; if not, it looks makeshift, its justice has slipped.

We need to look for ways to spread and strengthen justice as a value, as a culture and a character. I have never agreed with the criticisms that the AK Parti has no ideology or mission. For a party that has a goal like justice, no other ideology is needed. Well, the AK Parti has not made enough of the literature of the brilliant performance it has shown on justice; it has not turned it into a matter of discourse and character education. Should it have? Would it have been better to do a great deal and say little, rather than say much and do little? Let us leave the debate on that to the social psychologists.

Even so, the AK Parti is still far ahead in being the hope of the masses, and its only real rival is still itself, but this time with the accumulated problems of a record 17 years in power. The ways of discussing these problems within the AK Parti, of criticizing them when necessary, of developing solutions and of going further are not blocked. In other words, the paths of internal politics in the AK Parti are neither exhausted nor blocked. The solution, for Türkiye and for the AK Parti alike, lies not outside the AK Parti but within it.

Of course, defending ideas and getting them accepted is not always easy. It requires being willing to clash with other ideas. Where has the luxury ever been seen of every word we say being immediately accepted as true?

Still, the only things required are sincerity and courage.